Italian rocket company Avio outlines its future rocket plansLink here. The plans include steady upgrades to its Vega-C rocket, including replacing the upper stage engine presently provided by a Ukrainian company with an engine built by Avio itself.
The bigger development will be a more powerful rocket, the Vega-E, to replace the Vega-C in 2027.
This version of the rocket will retain the first and second stages of the Vega C+ rocket and substitute the third and fourth stages for a single liquid fuel stage powered by the company’s new M10 methalox rocket engine.
The company is also hoping to begin test flights in 2026 of a Grasshopper-type small-scale demonstration rocket leading to the development of a reusable two-stage rocket that would eventually replace Vega-E.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here. The plans include steady upgrades to its Vega-C rocket, including replacing the upper stage engine presently provided by a Ukrainian company with an engine built by Avio itself.
The bigger development will be a more powerful rocket, the Vega-E, to replace the Vega-C in 2027.
This version of the rocket will retain the first and second stages of the Vega C+ rocket and substitute the third and fourth stages for a single liquid fuel stage powered by the company’s new M10 methalox rocket engine.
The company is also hoping to begin test flights in 2026 of a Grasshopper-type small-scale demonstration rocket leading to the development of a reusable two-stage rocket that would eventually replace Vega-E.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Avio’s plans are to move in a better direction, but, as with most European space efforts, to do so far too slowly to gain, or even retain, fading market share. This Mediterranean distaste for haste is not going to serve them well in the long term. But, then, given Italy’s terminal demographics, perhaps lack of concern for a long term that nation will not be a part of makes a certain sort of sense.
Hello Dick,
I was thinking of your comment when I stumbled on Gavin Mortimer’s new piece on the UK Spectator today, which paints a very grim picture of not just Italy’s competitiveness, but the EU, full stop — a calamity rooted in horrible demographics, to be sure, but much more than demographics, too (as I know you agree):
On Monday, Mario Draghi, the ex-president of the European Central Bank and a poster boy for the European technocrat class, published a 400-page report on competitiveness that was commissioned by the European Commission in 2023.
Shortly before Draghi published the report, the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, posted a message on social media saying that she was ‘eager’ to hear what the former Italian PM had to say.
She might not have liked what she heard. Over 400 pages, Draghi laid bare just how sclerotic and uncompetitive the EU has become this century. Things are so bad that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing is done to halt what he described as the ‘slow agony’ of the continent’s economic decline.
In the press conference that accompanied the release of his report, Draghi said that only ‘unprecedented’ reform would arrest the decline. ‘For the first time since the Cold War, we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation, and the reason for a unified response has never been so compelling’, explained Draghi.
He said Europe required additional annual investment of at least €750 billion – approximately 5 per cent of the EU’s gross domestic product – if the EU is to catch up to America and prevent being overtaken by China. It is a damning indictment of how moribund the EU has become that of the world’s leading 50 tech firms only four are European.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-eu-is-disintegrating-before-our-eyes/
Oof.
I wish the new European space startups all the best. There are a few (like RFA) that are quite promising. I hope some can succeed. But the economic and regulatory environment in which they have to operate is going to make it hard going for them, unless things dramatically change.
400 pages just to say “they’re lazy.”